This disclosure generally relates to content presented by an online system, and more particularly to evaluating content items for presentation to a user based on a parameter of online system users specified by third party system providing the content items to the online system.
An online system, such as a social networking system, allows its users to connect to and to communicate with other online system users and with objects on the online system. Users may create profiles on an online system that are tied to their identities and include information about the users, such as interests and demographic information. The users may be individuals or entities such as corporations or charities. Because of the increasing popularity of online systems and the significant amount of user-specific information maintained by online systems, an online system allows users to easily communicate information about themselves to other users and share content with other users. For example, an online system provides content items to a user describing actions performed by other users of the online system who are connected to the user.
Additionally, entities (e.g., a business) sponsor presentation of content items (“sponsored content” or “sponsored content items”) via an online system to gain public attention for the entity's products or services, or to persuade online system users to take an action regarding the entity's products or services. Many online systems receive compensation from an entity for presenting online users with certain types of sponsored content items provided by the entity. Frequently, online systems charge an entity for each presentation of sponsored content to an online system user (e.g., each “impression” of the sponsored content) or for each interaction with sponsored content by an online system user (e.g., each “conversion”). For example, an online system receives compensation from an entity each time a content item provided by the entity is displayed to a user on the online system or each time a user presented with the content item requests additional information about a product or service described by the content item by interacting with the content item (e.g., requests a product information page by interacting with the content item).
Certain sponsored content items may be sponsored content items presented by an online system may be associated with a landing page that identifies content external to the online system for presentation to an online system user. For example, a sponsored content item may include a network address (e.g., a uniform resource locator) identifying the landing page, and when an online system user interacts with the advertisement via a client device, the client device retrieves content from the network address and presents the content in an application (e.g., a browser). Typically, the sponsored content item includes content representing the content included on a landing page. Thus, users interested in content presented by the sponsored content item interact with the sponsored content item to obtain additional information from the associated landing page about the content presented by the sponsored content item. However, landing pages may provide varying types of information to a user. For example, certain landing pages may provide minimal information describing content from a sponsored content item, while other landing pages may provide information unrelated to content presented by a sponsored content item. When a user interacts with a sponsored content item and is presented with content from a landing page that is of little relevance or interest to the user, the user is less likely to interact with other sponsored content items, which reduces interaction by the user with content presented by the online system and reduces potential revenue to the online system from presenting sponsored content items.